Mapping the information flow from one brain to another during gestural communication
Mapping the information flow from one brain to another during gestural communication
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1001791107
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发表时间：
2010-05-18
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Keysers, Christian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Schippers, Marleen B.;Roebroeck, Alard;Keysers, Christian
镜像神经元系统（pMNS）和腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）都被认为对社会互动很重要：pMNS是因为它与他人的行为产生“共鸣”，vmPFC是因为它参与了心智化。严格地说，pMNS的共振性质从未被研究过。经典的功能性MRI实验只研究了当看到或执行动作时pMNS区域是否会增强其活动。然而，共振不仅仅意味着“一起去和一起去”。观察者的pMNS中的活性应持续地跟随参与者的pMNS的活性随时间的更微妙的变化。在这里，我们直接探讨这种共鸣是否确实发生在连续的行动流。我们让参与者玩猜字游戏，同时测量了做手势者和猜手势者的大脑活动。然后，我们应用了一种方法来定位参与者大脑之间的直接影响：脑间格兰杰因果关系映射。结果表明，猜测者参与心理化和镜像的大脑活动与手势者大脑活动的时间结构相呼应。这为共振理论提供了证据，并表明参与运动规划的区域和参与思考他人精神状态的区域之间存在精细的时间相互作用。此外，这种方法通过提供不受约束的社会互动机会，使实验更具生态有效性。反过来，这将使我们能够利用社交缺陷的神经基质，如自闭症谱系障碍。
Both the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS) and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are deemed important for social interaction: the pMNS because it supposedly "resonates" with the actions of others, the vmPFC because it is involved in mentalizing. Strictly speaking, the resonance property of the pMNS has never been investigated. Classical functional MRI experiments have only investigated whether pMNS regions augment their activity when an action is seen or executed. Resonance, however, entails more than only "going on and off together". Activity in the pMNS of an observer should continuously follow the more subtle changes over time in activity of the pMNS of the actor. Here we directly explore whether such resonance indeed occurs during continuous streams of actions. We let participants play the game of charades while we measured brain activity of both gesturer and guesser. We then applied a method to localize directed influences between the brains of the participants: between-brain Granger-causality mapping. Results show that a guesser's brain activity in regions involved in mentalizing and mirroring echoes the temporal structure of a gesturer's brain activity. This provides evidence for resonance theories and indicates a fine-grained temporal interplay between regions involved in motor planning and regions involved in thinking about the mental states of others. Furthermore, this method enables experiments to be more ecologically valid by providing the opportunity to leave social interaction unconstrained. This, in turn, would allow us to tap into the neural substrates of social deficits such as autism spectrum disorder.